13th Alarm

Centering around the closing days of the school year, this is a view into the life of a one-room schoolhouse. This type of learning institution has long vanished from the landscape being continued in Amish communities and such. We get kid-centric amusement as various skills of music are performed by youngsters who were probably coaxed by parents to take up the instruments used.

This Our Gang short has the group playing pirates and building a ship to sail in. Once the ship hits water it sinks but they end up on another boat when the dog unties the rope and the kids head off to sea where they must be rescued by the Navy.

Set in the oil-soaked country of “Chilitina”—shot on location in San Diego’s Balboa Park—Oils Well! follows the travails of Monty, an everyman office clerk, who thinks only of his boss’s daughter. When Herbert Hester, an oilman “so crooked he cheats when counting his pulse,” schemes to cover up the company’s new gusher so he can claim it himself and get the girl, Monty swings into action. He eludes the hapless Chilitinan army, sidesteps the General’s amorous wife, thwarts Herbert, and saves the day.